S/V Mañana successfully transited the Panama Canal on December 26, 2009. Because of the holidays there were few cruisers at the Balboa Yacht Club when we went looking for crew (many had traveled inland, flown home, or just left for other locations for the holiday week), but we managed to find a truly international crew to man our lines. Each small boat moving through the Canal is required to have at least four line handlers aboard in addition to the captain (me) and a Canal Advisor. Andrea would get one line, and we coaxed our solo sailing friend Edward (South Korea) into helping. We also found two boatless travelers, Thomas (French) and Daniele (Italian), who were looking for a ride to Portobello on the Caribbean side so we hastily added them to the crew. Both Thomas and Daniele are hoping to find a ride across the Pacific, but for now they were happy to get to Portobello where they had a friend with an extra room. Along with the Panamanian advisor and the two Americans (us) we had a regular United Nations crossing.
We had already lined both sides of the boat with tires to prevent damage in case the turbulent waters in the locks bounced us around too much, and we had rented four 125’ long lines as required by the Canal Authority. The crew was ready at 7 AM as requested, and the advisor came aboard at 8 AM, but he brought news that we would not enter the first lock (about 4 miles away) until 10:30 because the Mexican tall ship was going through that day. We had really hoped that we could share the locks with this ship which would transit with much pomp and circumstance and flags flying. The late start would mean a two day transit with an overnight at anchor in Lake Gatun. For us a one day transit would have been much more convenient. When we did our practice passage of the Canal we had also been forced to stop in the lake for the night. While we were swimming in the first fresh water that we had seen on the entire trip an ACP boat (canal administration) came over to warn us that lake swimming was verboten because of the crocodiles. Oops! This time there would be no scheduled swim break.
We passed through the Miraflores Locks first and then the Pedro Miguel Lock. In each of these locks we were side tied to a sightseeing boat, and that made our passage much, much easier. The excursion boat was a large ferry, and she side tied to the wall so all we had to do was get our lines over to her and then hang on. The ferry entered the lock first, and our only job was to maneuver into position. Our daughter managed to catch us live in the locks on the Canal webcam.
We exited the Pedro Miguel Lock at noon and began the long motor trip (no sailing allowed) through the Culebra Cut and into Lake Gatun. This motor section of the trip was to take about 5 hours and covered about 25 miles. During this time we took turns steering, served lunch to everyone, sat in the sun and relaxed. The Lake is (was?) the largest manmade lake in the world and was created by damming the Chagres River as it flows into the Caribbean. The first three locks had raised the boat to the lake level some 84 feet above sea level. At the other side of the Canal we would pass through three more locks dropping down to sea level again, but the dam and the locks keep the lake level at 84 feet. This was a change from the original design of the canal which was supposed to be a sea level canal (like the Suez) with no locks, but the difficulty of digging, the constant land slides, the ever increasing width of the bottom of the canal (which then required many times more width at the top of the cut to prevent slides) led to the failure of the French effort, and the Americans opted for the more complicated lock system. The locks are water inefficient because none of the water is recycled. It just runs out to sea. Each series of lock openings uses about 1 million gallons of fresh water so even if our small boat was in the locks all alone we would need that much water to transit. New locks are under construction and they are designed to address this problem. Given the traffic in the Canal you can only guess at the amount of rainfall that Panama gets to keep replenishing the lake.
As we approached the Gatun Locks (and the nearby anchorage where we expected to spend the night) Andrea and Edward went to work on the advisor trying to get the trip completed that night. Fortunately we had (1) treated the advisor very well, feeding him constantly, and (2) he had previously worked in Canal Control so with a bit of effort on his part he managed to schedule a night entrance into the locks that we would share with a 700 foot tanker. We really appreciated the advisor’s extra effort because it meant he would spend another two hours aboard instead of heading home early to Panama City. In Gatun Locks we agreed to be tied to the wall, but with less turbulence on the downward trip this was okay. Our line handlers were great and we arrived at Shelter Bay on the Caribbean side at about 9 PM. We tied up and quickly opened the beer cooler. We were happy, tired and relieved.
Our top line handler Edward deserves a special paragraph to himself. Edward had a small retail business in Indiana that didn’t survive the recession. He and his wife, Jade, thought perhaps they would return to Korea, but since Edward always wanted to go sailing he thought this was an opportunity knocking. They flew to St. Martin (Windward Islands of the Caribbean), bought a 36’ Beneteau sailboat, took TWO DAYS of sailing lessons, and headed out for Cartegena, Colombia. He admitted he had no previous sailing experience but “I read a lot of books”. Jade had never been on a sailboat. They left St Martin in late October (too early) and headed west (wrong direction) and predictably got hit with the late season storms. They got knocked down, they got rolled, they got a lot of wind and 20’ seas. They also reached Cartegena (somehow) and after a three week layover headed for Panama, and they made it. Now Edward is fixing the boat and preparing to cross the Pacific to South Korea… by himself. Jade went home. They are still married, but she is not getting back on the boat again. I give the guy a lot of credit for striking out on a trip that even seasoned sailors would balk at, on a boat that might be a little less than a blue water boat, and on a boat that was bought out of charter, i.e. needs repairs. His comment was “The books don’t tell you how hard it is”.
Happy New Year
Tom and Andrea
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